John Burroughs 121 



their cornerstone. It is not open to discussion. For the rest, so far as his place 

 as a naturalist is concerned, annotators will continue to compare him with 

 Gilbert White and Thoreau, Muir or even Darwin, and the comparison will 

 show that with each he possessed certain attributes in common. 



Like White, he had a strong and abiding love of the everyday life about his 

 home. Both found an endless source of interest and pleasure in the miracle of 

 the changing seasons, the unfolding leaf and opening blossom, in the return of 

 the birds. But to Burroughs in much greater measure was given the poet's 

 temperament, the power of interpretation, and the gift of expression. His was 

 the more subjective mind. 



Thoreau, on the other hand, had no lack of temperament, or of power to 

 interpret and express, but his nature was far more complex than Burroughs'. 



Even in his journals there is frequent suggestion of pose wholly lacking in 

 Burroughs' books. He wrote as though someone were looking over his shoulder. 

 Nor in Burroughs' sane, sweet, companionable, lovable nature do we find 

 much resemblance to the disposition we commonly think of as Thoreau 's. It 

 is diflScult to picture Thoreau welcoming the thousands of pilgrims who have 

 received so cordial and kindly a greeting at 'Riverby,' 'Slabsides,' and 'Wood- 

 chuck Lodge' and who, knowing John Burroughs, loved him. There was no 

 guest-book at Walden Pond. 



Between Burroughs and Darwin, in spite of the wholly different places 

 they occupied in the world of naturalists, I have long felt there were many 

 strong points of resemblance; and the likeness, I believe, would have been 

 greatly increased if they had both had similar training. Burroughs' was the 

 more emotional, Darwin's the more material nature, but, given Darwin's 

 education, Burroughs would have made a great philosophic naturalist. He had 

 Darwin's love of truth for truth's sake; he was fair-minded, unprejudiced, 

 patient, and possessed of a keen desire to discover the relation between cause 

 and effect. 



But the lesson of Darwin's later years makes us grateful that Burroughs 

 was never subjected to the atrophying influences of long-continued, intensive 

 research. Primarily he was a lover, perhaps one should say a worshipper of 

 nature, rather than an investigator of nature. A technical education would 

 doubtless have made him a research zoologist, but schooled only by nature 

 herself, it was the poet rather than the naturalist in him that grew; the emo- 

 tional, rather than the scientific side of his character which was developed. 

 He traveled far and wide, but no lure of new species ever made him contented 

 far from home. The riot of tropical life repelled rather than fascinated him. 

 The Longspur of Alaska was not a voice of the tundra, but a reminder of the 

 Bobolinks singing in the meadows of his boyhood. He had no collection of 

 specimens; he made no definite, objective, continuous studies of animal life; 

 he recorded but few notes. Indeed, he had small patience with those who, 

 notebook in hand, 'interviewed' nature. "I go to the woods," he wrote, "to 



